


Fleur-de-Lis

by IanMuyrray



Series: Muy's OtherOutlanderTales [5]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 20:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16333289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IanMuyrray/pseuds/IanMuyrray
Summary: Anonymous said: What was it like for Ian to return home without his leg? Was it hard for him to adjust?A canon-compliant backstory series exploring what it was like for Ian (and Jenny) during the time betweenVirginsandOutlander.





	Fleur-de-Lis

**Author's Note:**

> While preparing for this prompt, I realized handling a canon-compliant backstory for Ian (and Jenny!) was impossible to do as a one-shot. Here’s the first installment of a series exploring what it was like for Ian during the time between Virgins and Outlander. 
> 
>  
> 
> _“Don’t tell me I dinna ken what it’s like!” Jenny blazed at him. “Stories, is it? Who d’ye think nursed Ian when he came home from France wi’ half a leg and a fever that nearly killed him?”_
> 
>  
> 
> _She slapped her hand flat on the bench. The stretched nerves had snapped._
> 
>  
> 
> _“Don’t know? I don’t know? I picked the maggots out of the raw flesh of his stump, because his own mother couldna bring herself to do it! I held the hot knife against his leg to seal the wound! I smelled his flesh searing like a roasted pig and listened to him scream while I did it! D’ye dare to stand there and tell me I…don’t…KNOW how it is!”_
> 
>  
> 
>  _—Dragonfly in Amber,_ Chapter 35, “Moonlight”

 

The letter from the Murrays said he had come home in the back of a wagon, but Jenny saw only one line when she read it:

 

_Ian is home and gravely injured. He is convalescing from the loss of a leg._

 

Hay still clung to the little clothing he wore when she had arrived, dusty from the road and stinking of the horse sweat that marked her haste. He was laid across a cot in front of the hearth, his body limp from pain and exhaustion, his skin damp with the cold sweat of fever.

 

She handed her cloak to a servant and stepped cautiously into the room. Barring Ian and a servant who followed her, it was empty; his mother and father had disappeared into the spare corners of their small farmhouse, avoiding the tortured breathing and desolate moans of their son. He was quiet and still as she approached him.

 

The room was a sanctum, Ian sprawled across the altar. There was something disturbing about this space, domesticity ripped away, the brutality of war violating the home. The only sign of robust life was the fire that burned.

 

“Ian,” she said softly. Scanning him for injury, she stepped carefully as she neared him, worried that even the slightest rustle of her skirts would disturb any rest he might have slipped into. He didn’t acknowledge her; maybe he couldn’t. She saw his chest rise slightly as he breathed, heard the rattle of it in his throat. But he was not resting, was not at peace; he was overcome with misery and despair.

 

Closer to him now, she saw the injury. Where there should have been two feet, he only had one. His right leg was sawed off at the knee. Caked with old blood, the blankets he had been given were stained brown and black, and he smelled like rust and dying flesh. Shock rumbled over her at the sight of it.

 

She gently touched his face. It was pale and green, contorted into an inhuman expression.

 

“Ian,” she said again, this time louder and more firmly.

 

With a sudden movement, his eyes popped open and he grasped her wrist so hard she thought it might bruise. Despite her discomfort, she wrestled her hand free and gave him a small smile, whispering, “I’m here to help you, _mo ghraidh_.” She had never called him that out loud before, the endearment falling from her lips as naturally as water down a waterfall. He softened at her tone, and the air lightened as his head lolled back, his gaze feverish and distant, unseeing, before his eyelids fluttered closed. He trusted her.

 

Had his family left him here to rot? To die? Where was the physician? Why was he alone? Why wasn’t anyone sitting to watch him?

 

The windows were closed to sweat out the fever, and it was dark and sweltering in the room. Heat crawled over her, causing sweat to bead on the back of her neck. Her hands drifted down the cot to the blankets and linen bandages covering his leg and she began to remove them. Peeling the sticky layers away, the silver tang of fresh blood met her nostrils. Something needed to be done, and fast; she could feel Ian slipping away into hazardous unconsciousness, blood loss threatening to overtake him.

 

Not noticing the cold, viscous pool of Ian’s blood at her feet, she knelt near the wound, peering at it as objectively as she could even as her own blood furiously roared in her ears. The surgeon’s field stitches had come undone, the wound reopened. It was horrific, ghastly up close; she had never known the human body to be so gruesome or so grotesque. The tissue had begun to rot, and the smell, like that of rancid meat, was not something she would ever forget. She nearly retched at the sight of the maggots within the wound. Dear Lord--how long had he been left like this?

 

Laying a gentle hand near his injury, she closed her eyes for a moment and murmured a prayer before she stood, back straight and shoulders squared. One of the servants stood a good distance away from the cot, hovering near the doorway with her hands clasped behind her back, averting her eyes from the sick and rotting man on the cot.

 

“I’ll need hot water, fresh linen, tweezers, and a knife,” Jenny ordered, her words swift and decisive. “And anything else that might prove useful. Now _go_.”

 

Ian groaned, a sound that walked the line between gratitude and protestation. Jenny touched him on his shoulder, one eye on the doorway awaiting the maid’s return.

 

His parents had abandoned him, had left him here, helpless and dying. Jenny was furious at them for it, she felt the rage roll through her veins, flicker under her skin; she would not let him sink into the abyss that beckoned him. Even with a featherlight touch, her hand on his shoulder turned hard as stone, when two maids returned, along with Ian’s mother, their arms laden with the supplies Jenny needed. Jenny barked orders, tying a spare apron around her waist and repinning the loose curls at the base of her neck that had flown free from their binding as her horse galloped towards the Murray home.

 

She didn’t spare a look at Ian’s mother, who hovered anxiously some distance from the cot but made no move to assist.

 

“Useless woman,” Jenny muttered as she prepped her tools, not caring in the slightest if she was overheard.  

 

After all the bandages were carefully removed from his leg, Jenny looked to Ian’s face. It glowed pale in the firelight, his features still and broken as if carved into clay and then cracked. She placed a hand on his head, his hair cool and damp with sweat, his skin hot from fever and the heat of the fire. She sensed him caught between two worlds, hovering between the living and the dead. She willed her gentle touches to be restorative and prayed he was too far away to feel, or imagine, what was coming next.

 

Jenny knew the basics of how to heal and how to kill. She had nursed sick animals, had cared for her older brother as he wasted away in illness, had fetched her mother water to drink before she died in childbirth. She was no stranger to the violence of farm accidents or the bodily destruction of injury, having seen it on tenants and servants, even her family members - the lash of a violent whip on her younger brother’s back, for one. She knew how to slaughter an animal for meat, knew the injuries that could kill men. She had read books about soldiering and seen paintings depicting the brutality of gun and cannon fire. But Ian’s injury — the worst she had ever seen —  was gruesome, a permanent maiming; it was not the result of a farm accident, nor was it an illness. This was war brought to hearth and home.

 

She gestured to Ian’s mother and the maids to come closer. “We must move him so I can see the wound better, there is too much shadow at this angle. Be careful ye don’t jostle him.”

 

Her hands grasped the cot near his head, and in a synchronized movement, the four women lifted and turned him so his wound faced the fire. The flames illuminated the desecrated flesh in a grotesque way, and bile rose in Jenny’s mouth just to look at it. She grabbed a tin cup, a stool, a cloth, and the tweezers, settling herself near his leg without glancing at it. Her gaze flicked to Ian’s mother in the shadows of the room, her look as sharp as a razor.

 

“Why don’t ye make yerself useful and get some laudanum?”

 

“We dinna have any,” came the sheepish reply.

 

“Whisky, then? And a belt or bullet for him to bite on?” Ian’s breath seemed to come faster and more shallow, escalating the urgency of removing the maggots from his leg and sealing the wound. Jenny clenched her apron in a trembling fist on her lap.

 

As if frozen, his mother stood still, jaw clenched as if to keep from crying.

 

“ _Then get out_ ,” Jenny hissed.

 

“But I want to—“

 

“If he had been tended to right away and not left to fester this might not ha’ happened. D’ye want to be the one to pull maggots from his leg?”

 

The woman turned a shade of puce at the thought.

 

“Get out,” Jenny repeated, this time with an air of apathetic dismissal. She knew each moment they waited Ian wasted away. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and took a deep breath in spite of the putrid air.

 

“Here ye are, mistress,” said one of the maids, bringing a bottle of whisky and a leather strap.

 

Jenny willed her shaking hands to be still. “Thank ye kindly,” she replied, her voice still terse but quieter now. “Try and get him to take a swig, a big one, and ask him to bite down on that, now, would ye?” The maid nodded.

 

Jenny peered closely into the wound, locating a maggot for removal. With one hand on his thigh to brace herself, her body angled so she didn’t block the light, she lifted the tweezers and — Ian’s body convulsed as he sat up to cough, and Jenny sat bolt upright, looking towards the head of the cot. His shirt was splattered with wet droplets of whisky and some dribbled down his chin while the maid jumped back from him.

 

“What did ye do?” Jenny demanded with a glare, rising to meet Ian. She pressed gently on his shoulders, encouraging him to lie back down before taking the whisky decanter from the servant.

 

“I didna do nothin’, mistress. He spat it out,” came the stammering response that Jenny ignored.

 

Jenny brushed hair back from his face, murmuring loving assurances in Gaelic. “Ian, _mo chridh_ e, ye must drink. Ye’ll feel better.” She held the decanter to his lips, and after a moment of hesitation, he drank several big swallows. Her fingers swept through his matted hair, attempting to tidy him. “There’s a good lad, I’ve got ye, dinna be afraid.”

 

She held her hand out for the leather strap, handed to her by the maid, and held it in front of his face. “Next, bite down on this, _mo ghraidh_ , and scream all ye need. The pain will be over soon.” With a final, loving touch to his chest, Jenny returned to her seat on the stool.

 

“Hold him down,” she ordered the maids, who stood at attention, their hands hovering over his shoulders, ready to brace him while Jenny did her work.

 

After a flicker of firelight, there it was — a maggot, moving through the muscles of the flesh. Jenny allowed herself to shudder, but only once before plunging to the task, sharp tweezers glinting in her hand. She could only hear the sickening _plunk, plunk, plunk_ of maggots into the tin cup at her feet as she worked. Jenny hardly dared to take a breath, hardly dared to _think_ about what she was doing lest she crumple into weakness like Ian’s mother… no, Ian needed her too much.

 

She pressed on, blocking out the groans and sharp breaths that echoed throughout the room. She told herself that temporary discomfort was better than more horrific pain or death. With quiet murmurs, she tried to assure him that this was best, that this was what needed to be done, that she was willing to do it for him, but nothing she said was of comfort to either of them.

 

Agitated by her poking and prodding, the wound bled freely, and at one point Jenny had to pull a belted tourniquet tight around his leg to slow the flow of blood. She dabbed at the wound with a linen cloth, not her first. A pile of bloody rags lay at her feet on the floor.

 

Without looking into the tin cup, Jenny stood and tossed the maggots into the fire. They hit the flames with a menacing hiss, and for a moment she pressed a hand to her stomach to steady herself before turning back to the man on the cot. Even with the tourniquet, his wound continued to seep on to the floorboards. With a chill that pressed upon her bones, Jenny wondered if the stain would be permanent.

 

But cleansing the wound wasn’t the hardest part - sealing it was. Out of the corner of her eye, a knife blade glinted evilly at her from the table, reflecting fire.

 

At some point, Ian had passed out, but now he stirred. His hand reached out, and Jenny went to him. She clasped his single hand in both of hers, brought it to her lips for the smallest of kisses before kneeling before him at face level.

 

“ _Mo chridhe_ ,” she whispered, “I’m sorry, this needs to be done. I dinna want to hurt ye but I must. I have to seal the wound.” He stared dazedly at her for a moment before nodding. The leather strap had fallen from his lips, and she gingerly held it to his mouth until he took it between his teeth. “Bite. _Hard_. And dinna let go.”

 

In a whirl of skirts, Jenny swiped the knife from the table and stooped to rest it in the fire. The flames blazed, and she blinked against the rush of heat that blew across her face. She reached behind her to touch Ian’s uninjured leg, giving it a gentle sweep of her hand as he trembled, waiting for her, for the knife.

 

In order to avoid a blistering burn, she wrapped her hand in thick cloth before pulling the hot blade out of the embers. She couldn’t look at Ian’s face.

 

On an inhale, in one swift movement, she pressed the glowing hot knife against Ian’s wound.

 

He screamed, and as the inhuman sound filled the room, Jenny felt the wind knock out of her. After a few torturous moments, she removed the blade—it stuck to the burned skin, and she had to carefully peel it off, much to her horror and Ian’s continued pain. She afforded herself one quick glance at the wound before settling the knife in the hot embers again. She’d need to do this two or so more times until it no longer gaped open.

 

She stayed near the fire, not daring to move near Ian’s head lest she lose her courage to finish the job.

 

“Again,” she announced, swiftly pressing the flat of the knife against the other half of the wound, and Ian screamed a second time, though this was less desperate — he now knew what it felt like and had been prepared. Somehow, this recognition made the sound of his cries worse, and Jenny blinked back tears.

 

What had he sounded like when the field doctor removed his leg? Who was with him? How had he survived the journey home, over land and over sea?

 

His muscles were drawn taut, his entire body tense. She could see more of him now than she ever had. He was dressed in hardly more than his shirt, the blankets removed by her own hands. His body was contorted, trying to crawl up into itself in pain, though she saw how he fought against it, how he tried to lie still and not ruin the work she was doing. He was pale and his eyes squeezed shut; he was perhaps on the verge of fainting or vomiting. Knife back in the flames, Jenny flew to him and cradled his face in her hands, pressed her forehead to his, willing her proximity to infuse him with comfort. She needed him almost as desperately as he needed her.

 

“One more, _mo ghraidh_ ,” she whispered to him. “And then we’re done, aye? And ye can rest, and I willna trouble you any longer.”

 

The maids, forgotten, stepped back into the shadows of the room, allowing the two some privacy.

 

“Are ye ready?” Jenny asked, not expecting a response. None came, aside from a lone groan, a hiss of breath. Whispering yet another prayer to the Lord, Jenny wrapped her hand in cloth for the last time and withdrew the blade from the flames. It glowed, red-hot and eager in her palm. “Last one,” she promised before pressing it against his leg the final time.

 

He didn’t scream, though his head did rocket up, teeth bared, and he glared at her, beyond her. In his agony, he had lost his sense of self, his grip on reality. She could sense it as his muscles tensed and he tried to pull away from her. His soul might have separated from his body, hanging on by a tether. She gripped his thigh firmly, not allowing him to budge, willing him to stay still.

 

“There,” she proclaimed, feeling nauseous as she peeled the knife from his burned skin. She briefly placed the blade back into the fire, enough to singe off the bits of his flesh that stuck to it; after, she nearly dropped the knife on the table in her hurry to be rid of the thing, to distance herself from the sound and sight of Ian’s pain at her hands.  

 

The leg was deep red and blistering, but had stopped bleeding. Slow and gentle, Jenny unclasped the buckle on the belt that made a tourniquet, wanting to give his leg some reprieve. A bruise formed where it had pressed, a menacing ring of purple and maroon, some edges of it yellow and green. Had this belt been on him since France? she wondered, giving the bruise a brush of her thumb as if she could melt it away.

 

“Get the burn balm,” she ordered a maid, who curtsied and left. “And you,” she said to the other servant, “bring fresh bandages. Please.”

 

In the few moments since the knife was removed, Ian seemed to have come back to his senses and was the most lucid Jenny had seen him since arriving. She went to stand near his head, and he blinked at her as if removing a glaze from his eyes.

 

“I’m alive,” he muttered, causing Jenny to smile.

 

“Ye are.” She felt tentatively triumphant. But Ian still blazed with fever, she could see it in his sweat, in the threatening cloudiness of his eyes — they were not out of danger yet.

 

She held his cheek, just for a moment, and they looked at each other. She opened her mouth as if to say something when the maids returned, bandages and salve in their hands.

 

She doused her hands in a nearby bucket of water, attempting to scrub away the blood that had crusted in her fingernails and the creases of her knuckles and palms. Even in the relative dimness, she could see the water change color from a clear transparency to an opaque, cloudy brown, rolling away from her hands. Ian’s blood. She scrubbed furiously, wanting to be rid of the horrific substance.

 

Drying off her hands on the apron, she nodded at the salve for one of the maids to open it as she spoke to Ian. “ _Mo_ _chridhe_ , I’m going to rub a salve on yer leg. It may hurt ye, but doing this now will help ye feel better later.” She tried to make her voice as soothing as possible, but he made no move to acknowledge he heard her.

 

She worked quickly and efficiently, her back stiff as she massaged the greasy substance into the burns. Perhaps she imagined it, but she thought Ian let out a sigh of relief at her touch. Her lips twitched with relief at the sight of his deep breathing before she wrapped his stump in linen, tying the bandage tight to ensure it wouldn’t chafe his skin in movement.

 

This was a labor of love, she thought to herself. There were few people in the world she would do this for. She hadn’t anticipated Ian to have so grievous an injury when she left Lallybroch, let alone that she would need to care for it herself, but when she saw him lying there, she snapped into action. She had been moved by something larger than herself. Of course, she had known his leg had been partially removed, but maggots? Green and purple rotting flesh? How could his family have left him that way?

 

Double and triple checking the final touches on the bandages, she muttered curses to herself, wishing she were a witch and could hex the Murrays for their cowardice.  

 

The servants left, leaving Jenny to sit on her stool alongside his head. She held an open book in her hands, but she didn’t read. She was restless, constantly monitoring his exhaustion, his fever, as he slept. His mother checked in once, bubbling over with feeble gratitude that Jenny disregarded, dismissing with a wave of a hand. Ian’s father, John, once stood in the doorway, not daring to enter. Ian was on the cot, and Jenny stared John down over Ian’s weary body, daring him to apologize, daring him to say anything. He left without a word.

 

“Jenny,” Ian said, once he woke, his voice hoarse. He searched for her, first looking towards the fire, then at his side. She sat, her back as straight as it always was, as if relaxing meant a lack of vigilance. She said nothing, but conveyed to him in her expression that she was listening as she grasped the hand he held out ot her.

 

“Stay?”

 

She blinked, long and slow. “Of course,” she replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper.


End file.
